CRIME

By Marilyn Stasio

Published: October 5, 2003

If Spenser is the invincible knight, the timeless hero of American detective fiction, then Jesse Stone, the protagonist of a more recent series by Robert B. Parker, is the flawed hero of the moment, a man whose deficiencies define his humanity. Jesse's shortcomings (he drinks a bit, is easily manipulated by women and has a tendency to use his fists) gave a certain depth to his character in previous outings as the new chief of police in a tiny New England coastal town called Paradise. But in STONE COLD (Putnam, $24.95), his vulnerabilities, especially his devotion to his shallow first wife, just make him stupid.

Not entirely, though. When three high school boys gang-rape a 16-year-old girl, Jesse handles the young thugs, the victim and their assorted parents in a manner so firm, and yet so gentle, that you want to cheer. It's when he investigates a series of random thrill-killings that Jesse loses his wits. Parker's lazy portrayal of the predators -- an arrogant husband and wife who are in it for the sexual high -- does little to make their actions credible, but that's no excuse for Jesse's lethargic police work. Just the same, I wouldn't write this guy off. Anyone who can restore a rape victim's dignity is someone you want in your corner.

If you've read ''Dialogues of the Dead,'' Reginald Hill's brainteaser about a serial killer with a mania for word games, you'll probably want to read DEATH'S JEST-BOOK (HarperCollins, $25.95). Or maybe not. Although the story is as rich with literary allusion and clever wordplay as its predecessor, this puzzler is less a sequel than a radical reinterpretation of past events -- which feels a little bit like cheating.

Franny Roote, the cunning sociopath and maniacal wordsmith who had Hill's Yorkshire coppers Andy Dalziel and Peter Pascoe tied up in mental knots in ''Dialogues,'' is out of prison and on his way to a shining academic career at Cambridge. If only his rival scholars weren't dying off at such an alarming rate. And if only he would stop writing effusive letters of admiration to Pascoe, who sees them as veiled threats. Pascoe's fears aside, Roote's epistolary style is as brilliant as it is bizarre, and his creepy letters -- on such eclectic matters as the revenge theme in Jacobean tragedy and the smartest way to avoid being raped in prison or in the groves of academe -- are a joy to read. Hill's deconstruction of his own earlier mystery is wit of a different order: dazzling in design, but so destructive of established certainties about key characters and their motivations that it still feels a little bit like . . . you know, cheating.

Tough but true: a first-time novelist has to bring something new to the table -- something like the trumps that William Landay throws down in his high-stakes police procedural, MISSION FLATS (Delacorte, $23.95). In the first of many twists on the familiar tale of a veteran cop who can't let go of a bad case, Landay assigns the storytelling to Ben Truman, a young police chief in rural Maine with no apparent connection to two related homicides that still haunt the old-timers on the Boston force: the ugly murder of a beat cop in 1977 and the botched drug bust that left another officer dead in 1987. Ben lays bare these wounds when, in policing an empty cabin on Lake Mattaquisett, he turns up the body of a Boston district attorney with an interest in the cold cases. Reluctant to turn over the homicide, he heads for the big city and becomes a player in the convoluted cover-ups of tormented men. Landay, a former prosecutor, writes with eloquent intensity, even a sense of despair, about the no-win ethical choices that can corrupt or otherwise crush a good cop. If there's a moral here, it's the one that Ben refuses to take from a street-savvy detective: ''Knowing when to stop is part of the job.''

The trouble with historical mysteries is that you pretty much know how they turn out. For all the huggermugger about political conspiracies and missing diplomatic documents that Anne Perry stuffs into NO GRAVES AS YET (Ballantine, $25.95), which is set in the tumultuous early days of World War I, it's a given that Archduke Ferdinand will be assassinated in Sarajevo; that Russia will invade Germany; that Germany will march into France; and that England and the rest of the world will be drawn into the chaos of war.

Given that appalling hindsight, it's hard to stay engaged with the plot that Perry has constructed around the efforts of Joseph Reavley and his younger brother, Matthew, to stop some imminent disaster they can't identify. Joseph, a widowed minister who teaches biblical languages at Cambridge, assumes the sad responsibility of investigating the shooting death of his best student, Sebastian Allard, an emblem of the golden youth of England destined to die on the battlefields. Matthew, who works in secret intelligence, has discovered that his parents were murdered over a sensitive political document. For all its complications, the story is not gripping. But Perry's melancholy evocation of the ''eternal afternoon'' that would soon turn to night all over England is lovely.

Unsolicited advice for lawyers who want to try their hand at a legal mystery: keep it simple and don't show off. Robert Heilbrun, an attorney with the New York City Legal Aid Society, gets it right in his first courtroom thriller, OFFER OF PROOF (Morrow, $24.95). His admirable mouthpiece, Arch Gold, is no celebrity cuff-shooter, but a humble public defender suiting up for Manhattan's first death penalty trial in half a century. The case is concisely laid out against Damon Tucker, a big, scary-looking kid from Harlem accused of robbing and shooting a businesswoman who identifies him before she dies. Gold is certain that Damon is innocent, but his client's courtroom demeanor (''his innocence was driving him crazy'') and certain vagaries of the law (explained in lucid terms by Heilbrun) conspire to stack the evidence against him. The drastic measures that Gold takes to restore the balance of justice give the story its visceral kick; but there's more blood-boiling excitement in following the trial procedures -- ''a twisted kind of theater,'' from Gold's perspective -- and discovering just how arbitrary the law can be.